Summertime....Summertime.

 We were surrounded by clouds yesterday evening but never really got any rain. The glow from the sun made the clouds look large.

Above all of the clouds was the moon showing brightly in the sky.  I call them day moons and it probably not a good term.  It was so clear that I could get a great shot.

On the ground yesterday I spent time deadheading seven different roses.  I also took the time to really cut back on an eighth rose, William Baffin, to reduce its size by a third.  The rose is a climber and the branches were getting to be too large that I couldn't maintain the grass around it nor keep it attached to the trellis because of its weight.  Above is a victim of a reckless cut of one of the bushes.  I did wear gloves and still got lots of wounds from the thorns.

This is the before shot of this great rose bush.  All the flowers were gone and I knew that I had to take it back a ways for new growth to take place.  I won't show you the trimmed version until it starts to bloom again in another month. Deadheading each cluster of flowers would have taken hours so taking the branch back made it a little faster.

 

 

My day lily bloom season has started. We are in Zone 5 and this seems to be about the normal time for them to start. I have a couple of them that are just now starting to shoot up stems. 

I just can't get the right photo taken of these but this one isn't too bad.  I have a water barrel that keeps showing up in the background so I have the camera leaning against it right now know that it won't be in the shot. I have seven stems of these this year, the best for me in the six years I have been here.  I am having memory problems when they were first planted but I know they have spread as I did not plant seven bulbs.  One of them is from a start from my grandmother Brooks.  She had them growing behind her old house and would tie them up with bulky jute bailing twine, attaching it to a large nail she had hammered into the side of the house.  She would brag that she counted 35 blooms on hers.  My mom took a sample from it and I now have that same start. I do think I bought a new regale lily to plant next to it in case the one that I moved here didn't grow.

We are less hot today but it still is warm.  We are having the predicted strong winds today and it looks like we will have the wind all day.  Other than the wind we will have a quiet Sunday here.  If it gets hot enough we have three different neighbors on our side of the street with pools and there will be children of all ages making the joyful sounds that comes with a swimming pool.  I wish you all to have a good summer afternoon.